Wayne's World: A new life ahead for Newburgh lake, creek

Just like the City of Newburgh, its 13-acre Muchattoes Lake is coming back from the near-comatose.

Wayne Hall

Just like the City of Newburgh, its 13-acre Muchattoes Lake is coming back from the near-comatose.

Last week, this was obvious when the pulsating evidence landed on shore.

Herby Kau from Queens hauled in a fat American eel as thick as his wrist.

Thousands of eels migrate upstream every spring into Muchattoes, and up in the Quassaick Creek Watershed, way beyond Newburgh.

Exactly where they go remains a mystery.

"There's a lot of people who fish here," Kau said.

In fact, he added, word is out on the fishing fraternity's hot-spots phone tree that Muchattoes is, indeed, hot.

Just then, a young garter snake cruised on shore and disappeared somewhere beyond Kau's foot.

You see, the lake's never given up the survival fight because it's fed by the tireless Quassaick Creek — and by a dogged group of environmentalists, the Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance, that just landed an Environmental Justice Grant.

The $50,000 grant could help with key water conservation and promote involvement by making it possible to build a walking trail around the lake and its 375-unit, low-income Lake Street Apartments — as well as offer water conservation workshops, habitat restoration, land-use education and divert storm water from Newburgh's overtaxed sewer system.

Along with the money comes an obligation to make the area accessible to people living nearby on slim resources and connect them to neighborhood health and social services centers.

Why all the attention focused on Muchattoes? For one thing, it's a lake with a huge story about water and why it's so drop-by-drop precious. It's a public drinking water source, too, for the Town of Newburgh.

Rising in the glacial hills of Marlboro and Plattekill some 18 miles north, the Quassaick Creek's been impounded, asphalted, diverted, trashed, slipped under highways and been redirected to trickles.

But it kept coming. Never gave up. As it flows into Newburgh, it slides under I-84, over a 19th century dam and heads into the city.

In fact, he's sitting next to water pouring in a foaming sheet as it drops from Muchattoes Lake into the gorge that carries the Quassaick down to the Hudson River.

The glistening spray disappears into the dreamy dark green gloom of shrubbery.

When you join the industrial histories of Muchattoes Lake and the Quassaick gorge, they make a huge Newburgh story.

It's always about people.

Like city historian May McTamaney's grandmother, who once toiled in a bleaching fabric factory on the lake.

"It was very caustic work; no gloves, really rough on you," McTamaney recalls.

History and its lessons are part of the living history of the lake, too. And preserving that is up to the people getting involved with projects described in the $50,000 grant, which will include their ideas and observations.

It's a start.

"Our goal," says John Gebards of the Alliance, "is to establish key resources to improve water quality, the habitat and the quality of life of people around the Quassaick Creek corridor."

A tall order.

But people love a comeback kid. "When people get involved," says Alliance member Smith, they can move mountains — and piles of garbage."

Such as the moss-covered tires Herby Kau was careful to avoid when he was casting for fish in Muchattoes behind the Lake Street mini-mall's nail salon.